Penúltimos Días

Nuevo informe de Human Rights Watch: “Un nuevo Castro, la misma Cuba.”

Un resumen: se recomienda continuar con la posición común de la Unión Europea y adoptar medidas internacionales contra la gerontocracia si no cumple con la liberación inmediata e incondicional de los presos políticos en un plazo de seis meses.

PD: Muy interesantes los comentarios de Jorge Castañeda en W Radio, esta mañana. (Castañeda es miembro del consejo de HRW Americas).

PD2: Maite Rico, en El País.

PD3: La respuesta oficial en Granma, elusiva y llena de lugares comunes.

PD4: Dos miembros de HRW comentan el informe para The Guardian.

PD5: La opinión de The Economist:

While Cuba justifies all this as self-defence against repeated American attempts to overthrow the Castro regime, in fact it is aimed at enforcing political conformity, argues Human Rights Watch. It wants the United States, before lifting the embargo, to secure a commitment from Europe and Latin America to press for the release of political prisoners.
That looks naive. Many left-wing governments in Latin America apply a double standard when it comes to human rights: while suspending the not-very repressive de facto civilian government in Honduras from the Organisation of American States, they want Cuba to rejoin. (After the coup in June that toppled Manuel Zelaya, Honduras’s president, Raúl Castro, with no apparent irony, even joined calls for an economic embargo against the country.) The European Union has normal economic ties with Cuba, but is critical of its trampling of human rights. Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel Moratinos, has said that he wants to use his country’s six-month presidency of the EU from January to soften that policy.
Just as the American embargo has been futile and counterproductive, there is no evidence that “engagement” by Europeans or Latin Americans has much impact in Havana. In the end, if change comes to Cuba it will be from within.